Localization of Impulsive Sound Source in ShallowWaters using a Selective Modal Analysis Algorithm

Abstract

Passive remote monitoring applications of underwater signal processing in a shallow water environment are an impactful area of research for environmental and marine-life monitoring. The majority of the sound source localization techniques require carefully placed synchronized hydrophone arrays, which can be complicated and hard to maintain. In this paper, we utilized the modal dispersions of a signal to derive a localization method for a noisy, shallow water environment. Our proposed algorithm employs modal selection to process the most noiseresistive dispersion curves, improving the accuracy and noise-resistivity of the existing methods. Moreover, we proposed a 2D localization method with multiple unsynchronized hydrophones and minimal hardware requirements and limitations. Furthermore, we analyzed the effects of underwater ambient noise on the accuracy of the proposed method, using simulated and real recorded explosion and whale sounds, and compared our algorithm's localization performance with others. Simulation results show increased localization accuracy of 30m for the recorded explosion sound and 360m for the Whale sound.